Railways making efforts to vacate Zhob Railway Station

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Railways was putting all-out efforts to vacate the Zhob Railway Station building as soon as possible which was occupied by unauthorized outsiders and was being used for residential purposes following its permanent closure.
The notices as per the new Ordinance of 2021 for removal of encroachment introduced by the federal government were being served to unauthorized occupants, an official in the Ministry of Railways told a state-run news agency.
He said the efforts were being expedited with the assistance of local administration and the levies to retrieve the encroached structures and hopefully the encroachment issue would be resolved.
The Zhob Railway Station was built in 1920 on the narrow gauge Bostan-Zhob segment. It was shut down for passenger traffic in 1985 and for goods traffic in 1990 due to poor economics, he continued. Since the station’s closure, no renovations have been made.
Due to the unstable law and order situation in this tribal area, he stated that the anti-encroachment operation for the evacuation of these unlicensed service structures will be carried out with assistance from the district administration of Zhob.
To a question, the official said Pakistan Railways has taken several steps to improve the financial conditions of the department including Raabta.
He said annually 60 million passengers used Railways for travel. 40 percent of tickets were being sold on the outdated processes without any audit and the Raabta was an initiative of the department towards enhanced customer facilitation by using an artificial intelligence approach.
The official stated that the system is currently decentralized with some shortcomings, including non-flexible fares, antiquated ticketing, and freight parcel booking systems, and the absence of automated reports.
He claimed that the manual system was ineffective and inaccurate. Customers can order car rentals, meals, and refreshments, book hotels, monitor the status of trains, select and pay for seats, and organize their travel using the Raabta platform.
In addition, he said that Raabta enabled users to check their status while traveling and that they could purchase tickets through a variety of channels, including websites, mobile applications, ticket brokers, and reservation agents.